Search This Blog

Pages

Posts

Charles Post's Actually Existing 'Socialism' – A Critique of Stalinism is such a mess of ideological nonsense, category mistakes, and predictable Trotskyist adages that, as one of my comrades pointed out, it must have been rushed to publication since Post, regardless of his flaws, is usually much more rigorous. In a context where people are turning to variations of Marxism-Leninism that are decidedly not Trotskyist I suppose it is natural that academic Trotskyists, who have worked hard to control the discourse about Marxism in the imperialist metropoles, would react with alarm. Post's article thus functions as a banal work of confirmation bias in that it repeats what Trotskyists have told themselves for decades, which just so happens to run parallel to the "common sense" of bourgeois ideology.

As I've been arguing for a while, "Stalinism" has to be one of the worst conceptual categories and Post proves, yet again, that this is the case. Generall…

After attending Jasbir Puar's recent Toronto talk and book launch the other night I was struck again with the dilemma that post- theory presents to Marxists, particularly Marxists like myself who occupy some sort of academic space. We all, to different degrees, represent the deep-seeded problem with what is often called "post-modern" philosophy/theory: its displacement of Marxism upon the sanctified pedestal of recognized radical theory, its idealist (and quite often obscurantist) bases that permit identity politics and movementism to proliferate as praxis, and (most damningly) the fact that the foundational authors of this tradition only achieved academic hegemony through a translation project funded by the CIA. I have diagnosed this problem in previous posts, and in Continuity & Rupture I attempted to provide a general explanation for the rise of "post-modernism" by linking it to a Marxist retreat forced by the "end of history" narrative of capi…

The bizarro anti-intellectualism that tends to manifest itself in leftist circles has always been paradigmatically represented by perspectives put out by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT)––whether they are shitting on BDS, claiming that the coup in Egypt several years ago wasn't really a coup, or claiming that physicists are liars––and yet again they've proved this anti-intellectualism with their recent hatchet-job on the late Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. These days I try to ignore their embarrassing hot-takes but both a local comrade and a twitter mutual sent me this article and it's the kind of thing that would make anyone who actually read Fisher's book gape and face palm. It also demonstrates something significant about the IMT and groups like the IMT: they are incapable of critical thought, their critiques of positions that are not wholly their own rely on straw-person misrepresentations, and so their political lines about reality in general––the i…

Well here it is again, as my New Year semester contract begins, the MLM Mayhem line-up of the most popular posts of the past year. Considering I've lacked the time and energy to post regularly, and my traffic has dipped here and there because of this, I can at least get at least one new post simply listing what entries did the best in the past year of 2017. So here's the round-up:

10. Guest Post: Narratives of Exclusion by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Faithful readers of this blog and my cultural blog, Achilles Powder & Lead, should be long aware that I'm an avid SFF reader and that one of my favourite contemporary authors is Benjanun Sriduangkaew. Close to the release of her excellent novella Winterglass at the beginning of December, Sriduangkaew embarked on a blog tour and I was more than happy to loan her the blog space to write about her narrative choices designed to push the margin to the centre. (Also, as most of you are aware, I have a book coming out in collaboration w…

The problematic of dogmatism in the left is a topic I've written about from multiple angles, both on this blog and in my books. Just like the anti-intellectual/academic-elitist dialectic I keep returning to, dogmatism is one of my personal concerns because, due to the problems it can cause through its practice or erroneous apprehension, it undermines the development of a revolutionary movement. I am still convinced that this is the case, because once a movement becomes truly dogmatic it loses its ability to creatively engage with the masses; it valorizes formulaic statements and a religious devotion to revolutionary texts at the expense of mass work. Which is why I'm writing yet another post on this topic… Although I feel it is important to contextualize what I'm about to write in what I've previously established since a pithy "anti-dogmatism" that is invested in reinventing the theoretical wheel for no good reason, erasing the accomplishments of the past, an…

The following is a guest post by Benjanun Sriduangkaew, brilliant SFF author and my friend, as part of her blog tour to promote her upcoming novel Winterglass. I've had the privilege of reading an advanced electronic copy of this book (thanks to a pre-order deal arranged by Apex Books) and can say that it is absolutely brilliant. Part of its brilliance lies in the various radical themes it explores, some of which Sriduangkaew's guest post will discuss, while other aspects of its brilliance are found in its literary quality, attention to characterization, and narrative detail. Since Sriduangkaew has also co-written an upcoming book with me (Methods Devour Themselves, Zero Books: 2018), a dialogue between fiction and essay, this guest post might also function as a cross-promotional. Especially since one of her stories in Methods Devour Themselves is a prequel to Winterglass.

Narratives of ExclusionWhat you leave out is as important as what you leave in
by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

I have another book coming out with Zero Books: Methods Devour Themselves, co-written by one of my favourite SFF authors, Benjanun Sriduangkaew. As some of you might know I have been a long time SFF fan. On my lesser read "cultural" blog I have written more frequently about SFF, particularly the work of Sriduangkaew. Collaborating with her on a book that was a combination of story and essay was something of a dream come true. In fact, seeing my name along with hers on the cover of a publication was one of those SFF fan "squee" moments––but in a more professorial manner befitting of a jaded leftist and academic pushing 40.

Methods Devour Themselves is a conversation between Sriduangkaew's stories and my essays, where one begets the other and vice versa, a dialogical experience that becomes a liminal literature. The question guiding the book's structure was: what philosophical exploration will this story provoke and what story will be provoked by this philosop…